La Otracina

Tonal Ellipse of the One

Holy Mountain

originally published June 13, 2007

After establishing itself in the psych-rock underbelly through a series of self-released CD-Rs, Brooklyn's La Otracina has finally created an honest-to-god album, something one can find in stores and purchase with actual physical money, and not just semi-fake computer bucks. Thankfully nothing much else has changed about the band's modus operandi, and on its Holy Mountain debut, La Otracina proffers up some fine mental discombobulation.

Successful psych-rock is traditionally predicated upon confusing and/ or otherworldly guitar or keyboard tomfoolery. Yeah, percussion is vital, but when folks get their minds zapped by Hawkwind or Acid Mothers Temple, it's not primarily because of the rhythm section. La Otracina, though, features one hell of a drummer in the person of Adam Kriney, who is sort of the group's mastermind. His drumming is furious yet diverse, like an untethered Kid Millions from Oneida. Although there's definitely a ton of awesome and confounding noise spewing forth from Ninna Morgia's guitar, Kriney's pummeling is easily the most immediately notable and impressive aspect of La Otracina's sound.

That sound is some classic improvisational psych-prog with both krautrock undertones and overtones. La Otracina is like a more free-form and slightly less bombastic Comets on Fire, more content to get by on skill and verve than mere volume and ferocity. Tonal Ellipse of the One might as well be some long-lost tape of Manuel Göttsching jamming out with Ginger Baker, with enough illicit substances coursing through the two to permanently obliterate every possible and potential future. It's a sprawling mess of a record, but one of the comeliest and most thoroughly satisfying messes ever.

Garrett Martin

La Otracina is playing a house show in Athens on Saturday, June 16. Details at www.myspace.com/laotracina.

Maserati

Inventions for the New Season

Temporary Residence Ltd.

originally published June 13, 2007

So our boys Maserati have pulled a minor Deerhunter, graduating to the internationally known label Temporary Residence. I wouldn't hold that label in the same regard as Kranky (Deerhunter's residence), but in the world of post-rock, it's one of the kings. Home to known names such as Tarentel, Eluvium, and Explosions in the Sky (which is on TV every week with its score to the small-screen series "Friday Night Lights"), the label wanders a bit aesthetically but usually sticks to its roots. So Maserati was a good choice. What of Inventions for the New Season, though? It's been three years since even that three-way with Cinemechanica and We Versus the Shark, five long ones since the last full-length The Language of Cities. Obviously, this isn't going to be quite the same Maserati.

When the band first started out, post-rock was everywhere, and these guys, like most others, worshipped at the Mogwai altar. It was no sin then and now it's a charge that won't really stick. There's still a bit of the soft-loud dynamics and cinematic booms and falls, but the quartet has branched out considerably - losing a little magic even as it has gained a good bit. "Kalimera," for instance, is a song the band wouldn't (and maybe couldn't) have written five years ago, but for all its mood-modulating wonder and widescreen beauty, it's really just a Lanterna tune with drone. Elsewhere, "This is a Sight We Had One Day From the High Mountain" visits the krautrock canon, fuzzing and tremoloing everything out. Closer "The World Outside" is essentially more Lanterna-styled music with an ambient backdrop.

All eight tracks on Inventions for the New Season work well on their own, but as an album, the record lacks in new ideas. After five years, I expected more from Maserati. So, civic pride for the boys making it big, sure, but perhaps I expected too much.

Michael Wehunt

Maserati is playing at the 40 Watt Club on Friday, June 15. See interview here.

Kalabrese

Rumpelzirkus

Stattmusik

originally published June 13, 2007

Casual listeners will undoubtedly peg Swiss multi-instrumentalist and producer Sascha Winkler's (AKA Kalabrese) maiden full-length voyage as a house record. These pigeonholers will cite Rumpelzirkus' sleek synthesizer melodies and funk-indebted mechanical rhythms as their supporting evidence, and they'll point out that the house music community drooled over Kalabrese's early singles. But the house tag - or any tag, for that matter - is too limiting to apply to this album.

Unlike many house producers, Winkler relies heavily on live instrumentation, which both he and a cast of studio musicians provide. Horns, electric and acoustic guitars, bass, and a bevy of percussive devices adorn these songs. Winkler doesn't employ these instruments simply for their warmer timbres, either. He also capitalizes on the sense of spontaneity allowed for by working in real-time with other flesh-and-blood musicians, leaving wide openings for improvisation in his trance-like songs. More often than not, this marriage of expansive vamps and energetic jamming calls to mind the live-band party music of the pre-hip-hop era. The rumbling funk bass and sweltering horn solos in "Auf Dem Hof" suggests Slave and Tower of Power; the scuttling conga polyrhythm in "Deep" smacks of Afrobeat; the slap bass, trombone and electric piano breakdown in "Oisi Zuekunft" meanders all across the acid jazz continuum.

There are also a slew of genuinely weird songs to contend with, cuts like "Hide," "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Lose My Chair" that deal in fractured, Fred Frith-like guitars, haunted and distraught vocals, and clanking percussive barrages. These tracks might yank the plug out of a fiesta, but they're just as daring and alluring as Kalabrese's fiercest grooves.

Phillip Buchan

The Lichens

Omns

Kranky

originally published June 13, 2007

When it comes to the more avant-garde end of the psychedelic music spectrum, particularly the drone-soaked variety, you often come across references to astral planes, out-of-body experiences and other hooey stepping stones across the stagnant bongwater creek of drug music. There's an assumption, it seems, that purveyors and absorbers of such music are by necessity heavily dosed. Otherwise they wouldn't "get it." I've never bought into this prejudice. You can still - easily! - tune in and out to the best of this shit without expanding your mind, man.

Robert Lowe is a man who surely is thought to ride the mental rollercoaster, as any who caught his Caledonia show last summer can attest. His music under the name Lichens is built on skeletal frames and then the flesh and muscle is attached via improvisation. Lichens' debut The Psychic Nature of Being was an actually unique set, in which Lowe used his own processed voice to create relaxing drones. His elegant acoustic folk picking on top resulted in mesmerizing cross-hatching. Omns is a logical follow-up, but a different monster all the same. Guitar and drone fold into one another more here, and if Lowe's still droning his vocal cords, it's far less apparent. The faint ominous mood from Psychic Nature is more upfront, but this record is still incredibly soothing.

Centerpiece "M st r ng W tchcr ft L v ng n Sp r t" is a 19-minute beast of drone, finger-picking, and field recordings. Right in the middle it all drops out into chirping birds, and soon Lowe is humming and crooning wordless vocals along with them. It's a stunning amalgam of creepy and lush. "Bune" is the most psychedelic of the five pieces, with Lowe electrified and soloing to the point of the affair taking on a doom undertone. This is heady stuff and you're not going to find anything else really like it. Like John Fahey on acid, yes, but you'll need nothing more than your regular old brain and ears to trip out.

Michael Wehunt

Growing

Vision Swim

Mega Blade / Troubleman Unlimited

originally published June 13, 2007

It's truly difficult for me to write about Growing. Not only do I find it hard to articulate how fascinating and just incredibly awesome the band's music is, the main problem is that Growing really only sounds like itself. When Joe Denardo and Kevin Doria released their debut The Sky's Run Into the Sea back in 2003 (as a short-lived trio), a new chapter opened in ambient music. Marrying drone and drift with the power of doom metal in a way that's never been done before, Growing was the opposite of Sunn O))) and its brethren. Still king was the bliss of gorgeous drone; it was merely tempered with crushing riffage and volume. The duo refined this template with their second record, but began a restless pioneering streak that has made them, in my estimation, THE GREATEST BAND IN THE WORLD.

Of course, I'm aware of the gravity of that caps-locked statement. An abstract guitar band being touted as U2 or Radiohead? But that's the beauty of America, right? Last year's Color Wheel was a stunning culmination for Doria and Denardo, seeing them branch out into interweaving give-and-take guitar noodling that still yields hidden intricacies to my ears. They kept all their pretty power, yet firmly stated that they're not to be pigeonholed. Which critics did anyway. Since it frustrated me to see the term "drone" and the names Sunn O))) and Khanate dropped in reference to Growing, I can only imagine how the guys in Growing must have felt.

Perhaps that's the genesis of Vision Swim, which manages to be both a continuation of Color Wheel's thread yet a completely stripped-down version of Growing's vision (pun intended). It's a simple record, modest even, with five tracks barely touching 40 minutes. Gone is the sudden power noise, but, most notably, the album waits until the closing track to even hint at drone. "Onanon," at least, carries a hint of another band, Black Dice, but I can honestly say that great trio has never produced anything touching this. Fifteen minutes of skipping notes, rhythmic riffs and crunches that pile up while never losing that jazz level of trading off of each partner. "Morning Drive" follows with a stretched out, more playful version of its brother. "Lightfoot" is the closest to classic Growing, ending the album on a drifting nod of euphoria. Washes of soft distortion rock back and forth while frequencies rocket up and down, and an almost choral element enters along with gurgling bubble-wrap percussion.

Vision Swim is, essentially, a document of where Growing is at this moment in time. Me, I'd be happy if the group released a weekly snapshot of what they're up to. The duo shows no signs of slowing down, and in no way have they reached their peak. The album works especially well in that it's no grand statement, and for it to be this good is intimidating.

Michael Wehunt